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The absolute gall of him. “You know what I meant. Don’t treat me like I’m an idiot.”
He paused in his probing and momentarily gave me his full attention. “I would never treat you like that. I know you’re not stupid, but you are confused and pissed off because you don’t know what just happened.”
He lifted my hand and examined where my acrylic had torn off and the cracked nail beside it.
My natural nail had broken away with it, leaving the bed beneath raw and bloodied. I was doing my best to ignore the way it throbbed. “I don’t know why I’m in here with you right now.”
“Yes, you do,” he replied confidently, taking another look at the cut on my arm. “It’s not deep enough to need stitches.”
“I don’t think you’re the right person to be helping me make sense of what just happened when I’m ninety percent sure you helped make it happen.”
“I’m one of the only people that wants you to know what’s going on, Lana. The fact you’re so clueless tells me those who should have already told you, haven’t.”
My mind swirled with different ideas of what he could be talking about. Who he could be talking about.
“You want me to understand, but you just confused me even more.”
“You’re not afraid of me.”
I blinked at him, my brow furrowing. “We’ve already established that but seeing as you’re going around murdering people for fun I probably should be.” I sighed and begrudgingly amended my statement. “Overseeing the murders of people, I mean.”
He leaned down, placing his face closer than I was comfortable allowing so that he could examine my legs and feet. I focused on how his fingertips felt traveling across my skin. They lessened the pain by partially distracting me. The cologne he was wearing had an equally soothing effect.
Ciaran being a source of comfort? It was definitely snowing in hell right now.
“You aren’t afraid of me because we’re not much different and something inside you knows that’s true. You’ve always known.”
My brows rose and I couldn’t hold withhold an incredulous laugh. Was he likening me to his ability to not bat an eye when people died? If that was what he meant then, of course, we were similar. That could be said for the dozens of others that grew up in our covert world. But this? I didn’t know what the hell this was about.
“Ciaran, you and I are nothing alike.”
His eyes flew to mine, and he reached out, gently touching the side of my face. “Don’t you ever get tired of all the lies you have to tell yourself?”
I knocked his hand away with a scoff. I may have been drawn to him, but it was in the same way a beast was when it found itself captivated by another. He was a rare and dangerous thing. I’d known that from the very first time I laid eyes on him.
Which was…
Actually, I couldn’t remember.
I’d never even thought about that until now. For as long as I could recall he was someone I wasn’t allowed to talk to, that I couldn’t be alone with. He was never supposed to touch me. Yet here we were, locked inside a fancy bathroom with him doing all of that and then some.
And I didn’t entirely hate it.
Ciaran took a slight step back and then reached down beside us to open a cabinet. “It’s not clicking for you, is it?”
I licked my lips and slowly shook my head, watching in silence as he retrieved a large first aid kit and opened it up, pulling out disinfectant and bandages. I remained silent when he looked at me for any sign of resistance before he started to patch me up. This was the least he could do.
“Those people in the barn, we don’t consider what happened to them murder. They were eliminated.”
“I’m sorry, did you just say eliminated? Like we’re in some kind of fucked up…” Game, I finished silently. “Is that what this is supposed to be? What just happened in the barn? That’s…that’s extremely messed up.” I leaned as far away from him as I could manage and began searching the bathroom for any signs of cameras or recording devices.
“Lana,” he called my name softly.
I ignored him and turned towards the mirror, pausing when I got my first real look at myself. Holy shit. I looked, and this is no exaggeration, like I’d gotten into a fight with a goddamn bear—and lost. Pieces of leaves were stuck in my hair. There were smudges of dirt on my skin along with a few scratches and the thin gash on my arm was surrounded by dried blood.
“I look like complete shit.”
“You’ve never looked more beautiful. You finally lost the shell you’re always hiding in.”
My eyes shifted to his in the mirror. Sincerity burned in his gaze along with something else I didn’t want to acknowledge but couldn’t ignore. It had a foreign sensation taking root in my chest as a pesky flutter traveled through my stomach.
